Late last month Sprint sent out a crop of letters notifying a “small minority” of its customers they were terminated because of excessive calls to customer service. Terminated customers had their account balances set to zero immediately, but Sprint noted in the letters that the subscribers must sign up with a new carrier by July 30 if they wish to port their phone numbers with them. The letter reads:

“Our records indicate that over the past year, we have received frequent calls from you regarding your billing or other general account information. While we have worked to resolve your issues and questions to the best of our ability, the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs.

“Therefore after careful consideration, the decision has been made to terminate your wireless service agreement effective July 30, 2007.”

A Sprint spokesperson said auditing their customers in this way is common practice, because the carrier has “to be able to quickly and efficiently serve customers.” During the first quarter of 2007, Sprint reported a loss of 220,000 post-paid subscribers.

Statistically speaking, it’s likely that you (whoever you are) use Google for most of your searches. That’s fine – and I’m right there with you – but new information suggests that people who use Yahoo are better spellers. Wo is us!

In a thread on the Cre8asite Forums, John Mueller posted the evidence. “Looking at my logs, I noticed that an average of 5 to 6% of all visitors from Google used the spell-correction to make it to my site (this is the same across several sites, the rest of the numbers are from one site only for the last 6 months),” he writes.

“Of all my Yahoo users, only 1.8% used the spelling correction . . . which could mean that either Yahoo users know how to spell or Yahoo doesn’t correct misspellings that well, or perhaps even, that Yahoo sends users to the proper search results even if the query is misspelled,” Mueller continues. “I wonder which one it is?”

So do I. In that same Cre8asite thread, Bill Slawski, “rynert,” and “Mano70” posted similar statistics, and on Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz says he may add even more. This presumably creates a fairly large sample size that spreads across several demographics; something’s definitely at work here.

Yet, having proofread this article several times (and having left the misspelled “woe” in place on purpose), I’ll leave the speculation to someone else – perhaps a Yahoo user.

What seems pretty clear is that there is plenty of supply: as of this moment, there are over 8500 phones for sale, and auctions seem to be ending around the $650 – $700 mark, hardly a huge profit on the $599 retail price. The days of sellers retiring on the profits of one desirable gadget are, I fear, over; though for the imaginative, there is still plenty of interest to be found. One seller who’s used the spin to his advantage, advertising his phone as $21 million Buy It Now or Best Offer, has had 138 offers… all of which he’s turned down. Russell Shaw called this “hey look at me marketing”, and I’m sure we’ll see plenty more of it in the future.

A former Googler who returned to Microsoft after a start-up he left the software giant to launch was acquired by Google, has some not so positive insights to share about what it’s really like to work at the Googleplex. Behind the lava lamps, organic dinners and free shuttle buses lurks a company where employees end up working long hours, don’t enjoy private offices and get paid less than Microsofties.

— “People are generally in the building between 10 a.m. and about 6 p.m. every day, but nearly everyone is on e-mail 24/7 and most people spend most of their evenings working from home.”

— “Most people don’t actually have a 20 percent project. Most managers won’t remind you to start one.”

— “There are glass-walled offices, there are open-space areas, there are cubicles, there are people who’s (sic) desks are literally in hallways because there’s no room anywhere else.”

— “A college kid can literally join Google and, like they did as freshman at university, let Google take care of everything. Of course, if Google handles everything for you, it’s hard to think about leaving because of all the ‘stuff’ you’ll need to transition and then manage for yourself.”

— “Google’s health insurance is actually not nearly as good as Microsoft’s.”

Among the insider’s suggestions for Microsoft to compete more effectively with Google in recruiting and retention is offering employees free food. Serving breakfast by 8:30 a.m. will ensure that many workers are at the office early, the ex-Googler said.

Who is this mystery person who dares to reveal the untold secrets about the company ranked best place to work by Fortune?

In her ZDNet blog, Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley says she knows who it is and that she contacted him and his opinions reflect those in the e-mail. He is one of the founders of Phatbits, a company acquired by Google, she says. He left Microsoft before starting Phatbits and then returned after leaving Google. Foley does not identify him but writes that he said he did not create the blog or post the e-mail to it.

UPDATE 9:00 AM PT June 28: A new “Phatbits.com” blog has one entry, entitled “My Words,” in which someone claims credit for the opinions expressed about Google but not for the creation of the posting or the blog, and expresses dismay that Foley revealed enough information for his identity to be discovered. “Today my words got splashed all around the Internet. It’s interesting to see them living a life of their own outside the context they were created in,” the posting says. It includes a letter to Foley that says, in part, “The questions did come from my recruiter and what is published is, as far as I know, my exact response. I haven’t compared the online text with the original response so it’s possible some details have been changed but, as far as I know, those are my words. I answered the questions in the context of a business communication so my response might include things Microsoft considers confidential. I made a big effort to make sure it didn’t contain any facts that Google considers confidential per my agreements with them.” It is signed “Warm Regards, Geoffrey.”